The parable of the sower is fairly transparent in meaning, especially since the Savior Himself explains it. What is most interesting here is the sequence in which the obstacles are listed...
The parable of the sower is fairly transparent in meaning, especially since the Savior Himself explains it. What is most interesting here is the sequence in which the obstacles are listed, the obstacles that stand before a person on the way into the Kingdom. It all begins with the need to hear the word about the Kingdom. This is, of course, not simply a matter of some words about the Kingdom reaching a person's ears; one must truly hear, pay attention, and then turn one's heart to what the witness says.
In fact, this is conversion, without which the path into the Kingdom will not begin. Conversion, however, varies, because in different cases it touches different layers of the human person, the soul and the heart. There is a superficial conversion, at the level of idle interest - and then a person remains an adherent of Christ and the Kingdom only until the first problems, difficulties, and persecutions. This does not necessarily mean some persecution organized by the authorities; the problems and difficulties that inevitably arise before anyone who wants to rebuild life according to a new ideal are enough.
If the ideal is received superficially enough, the person simply will not want the problems connected with it and will step aside. It happens, however, that conversion is deep enough for the new convert to endure even real persecutions. He has enough resolve; he is ready to follow Christ into the Kingdom, but he does not yet have experience of the spiritual path. Yet resolve alone is not enough; one also needs the skill of the path, experience connected with the process of spiritual formation. It is not acquired quickly; it requires consistency and persistence. The spiritual work itself connected with the Christian path often turns out to be rather dull, unflashy, outwardly unnoticed. It certainly includes bright spiritual experiences too, but they make up, conventionally speaking, about ten percent of this work, while the rest is painstaking effort to build one's own life, inward and outward. It is like artists and athletes: one or several bright days of glory presuppose several years of intense labor hidden from those around them.
If a person is not ready for such work, if he is constantly distracted by something else that matters more to him, he may set out on the spiritual path, but fairly soon he will inevitably turn away from it, remaining at best only an amateur of vivid spiritual experiences. But if a person is ready for the corresponding effort, then, showing resolve and consistency, he will surely bear his fruit - for God does not leave without help those who take spiritual life seriously. Here everything depends on the person himself.
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4:1 Mat 13:1; Luk 8:4.
4:2 He taught them many things by parables - After the usual manner of the eastern nations, to make his instructions more agreeable to them, and to impress them the more upon attentive hearers. A parable signifies not only a simile or comparison, and sometimes a proverb, but any kind of instructive speech, wherein spiritual things are explained and illustrated by natural, Pro 1:6.To understand a proverb and the interpretation - The proverb is the literal sense, the interpretation is the spiritual resting in the literal sense killeth, but the spiritual giveth life.
4:3 Hearken - This word he probably spoke with a loud voice, to stop the noise and hurry of the people.
4:10 When he was alone - That is, retired apart from the multitude.
4:11 To them that are without - So the Jews termed the heathens: so our Lord terms all obstinate unbelievers: for they shall not enter into his kingdom: they shall abide in outer darkness.
4:12 So that seeing they see and do not perceive - They would not see before now they could not, God having given them up to the blindness which they had chosen.
4:13 Know ye not this parable? - Which is as it were the foundation of all those that I shall speak hereafter; and is so easy to be understood?
4:19 The desire of other things choke the word - A deep and important truth! The desire of any thing, otherwise than as it leads to happiness in God, directly tends to barrenness of soul.Entering in - Where they were not before. Let him therefore who has received and retained the word, see that no other desire then enter in, such as perhaps till then he never knew.It becometh unfruitful - After the fruit had grown almost to perfection.